Camel Burgers

My friend's house in the Medina in Fez, Morocco is just off Tala'a Kbira, along which are primarily food stalls and street vendors.   And while this photo isn't a postcard it would probably generate a lot of sales if it were, as this place is among the most photographed stalls in the Medina.  Most of the postcards of businesses in the Medina feature the tanneries - this one would be different!

As you might or might not imagine, this stall sells camel meat.  The camel head is its primary marketing icon.  Besides the raw meat, one of the offerings appeared to be like a sausage, although very large.  While a local told me it was a stuffed camel pancreas, I think it was more likely a stuffed camel spleen, and is one of the very few meat dishes sold in the market that is already cooked, and "ready to eat".   I did not try any.

I did try a camel burger at Cafe Clock.   (See previous post on Cafe Clock here.)  Believe it or not, a camel burger is surprisingly delicious. This audio slide show by The Guardian gives a pretty good overview of the cafe and the burger. 

P.S.  It's Postcard Friendship Friday.  You know what to do.

Cafe Clock

This is the water clock on Tala'a Kbira in the Fez Medina, after which Cafe Clock is named.  No one seems to know how it works; all that is known is that it is/was a clock.

I found a map of the Medina, and Cafe Clock is marked with a "5".  My friend Evelyn's "dar" ("house") is on Derb Bensalem, two "blocks" from Cafe Clock.  Note location of the Bab Boujloud, shown in this post from a couple of days ago.

Moroccan Mosaic

The first day we were in Fes, Hassan took us to a tile/mosaic "factory" where we saw how Moroccan tiles and mosaics were designed and created.  The amazing thing was watching men chip pices of tile into precise shapes for mosaics (and being paid by the piece to do so), then taking those chips, and building a mosaic upside down, with only the shapes to fit together, not the colors.  I think I could work 20 years attempting to build these mosaics, and not do so successfully.

Morocco

Morocco is a lot bigger than one might think. 

Notice on the map the distance between Marrakesh and Fes, in the northern half of the country.  That's about ten hours by bus, through Casablanca.  A loooooooong ten  hours on a bus with no bathroom, no explanation of the program (We're stopping?  Is this for a bathroom break, a meal?  What's that - you've got your prayer rug out and are praying toward Mecca?), and an old man hocking loogies into a handkerchief in the seat across the aisle. 

We were on the plane from Spain to Fes, happy to be up in the air due to all the cancelled flights resulting from the Icelandic volcano.  As we were about to land in Fes, the pilot announced that due to a thundershower parked over Fes, the plane would be rerouted to Marrakesh and we would be bussed back to Fes. 

The bad - the 10 hour bus ride.  The good - I went riding on the Marrakesh express.

Back in the Saddle with a Postcard from the Bab Boujloud in Fez, Morocco

Just returned from three+ weeks traveling in Morocco, Spain and Portugal, and am trying to get back into the swing of writing my daily post.  I have to admit it was nice having the break, but breaks are often hard to break themselves.  I bought tons of postcards, mailed as many as I could and now have the task of sorting what I've purchased, and posting some of them on line.

The above is the Bab Boujloud, or "Blue Gate" in Fez, Morocco.  It is one of the entrances to the Medina, or old walled city, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  The Medina is considered the largest car free urban area in the world, and possibly among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world as well.

For a week, we went to and from this gate daily, as it is the closest entrance to the location of our friend's house where we stayed, about a five to ten minutes walk into the Medina. (See: Evelyn in Morocco for more views of her house - she rents the ocassional room to tourists if you are so inclined.)  

Directly outside the door to her house is the neighborhood communal fountain (not all houses have running water), and as we came and went, we might see a woman washing dishes, a boy filling up containers with water, or a man washing his feet.  Her "street" runs into one of the main food shopping streets in the Medina, Talaa Kbira, and we passed small shops selling everything from rose petals and medicinal herbs to camel meat and live chickens.  One shopkeeper hung a camel head on a hook over his wares, either to communicate what was being sold, or to tweak the tourists, or both.

Staying in the Medina and experiencing daily life (although for a very short time, to be sure) is a completely different travel experience to staying in a fancy hotel and dipping into the Medina as part of a tour.   Our daily life experience included lunch in the home of a Moroccan couple and tea in the home of our friend's husband's family, hanging out with a fun-loving and culture-promoting bunch of ex-pats and locals centered around Cafe Clock (where we had a day-long cooking lesson), awakening to the daily 5:30 AM calls to prayer, a visit to two police stations and a jail, drinking copious amounts of mint tea in Zacharia's cafe, singing and dancing while we sampled a variety of local music cd's in the cd shop (friend of our friend and her Moroccan husband), dodging the nightly garbage, avoiding the constant hustling for dollars, slogging through a lot of muck on a rainy day, and and and.

To be continued.....

Spain, Morocco & Portugal

I'm leaving for a three-week trip to Spain, Morocco and Portugal tomorrow, and don't know if I'll be able to post any postcards.  I'll be collecting some and mailing others, but access to a scanner might be a challenge.

If any of you postcard people are interested in receiving a postcard, let me know your addresses, and I'll make every effort to send you one.

I suppose I'll have to make up the non-posting days, in keeping with my commitment to post a postcard a day for a  year, but I'm not complaining.  Can't wait to go!

Evelyn in Morocco

My friend, Evelyn, moved to Morocco about 2-1/2 years ago. She didn't mean to. She was on her way to Turkey to teach English as a second language, but was going through Fez, Morocco on the way there to take a semester of Arabic at the Arabic language institute in Fez. Three months later she was teaching ESL at that same school, was married a Moroccan man 20+ years younger than her, and bought a 200 year old house in the Medina (walled city) which she is fixing up to be a B&B. Quite a change.

This postcard arrived yesterday, in a package she sent me. The package included some very cool shoes, and bracelets made of the buttons from a Berber burka.